Day of Reckoning

There's a link between diet and acne. Adolescence can be difficult. Yes, it's genetic, but diet is major. Stay away from dairy. And as with cardiovascular disease, it turns out to have a major inflammation factor,  Omega-3 is important.

Keeping track of what you eat is easy, if your tastes are simple. Easy to plot out the glycemic load.  Take those Trader Joe's granola bars for example.  No sugar, all natural ingredients. Lots of "fruit juice" -- lots of "cane syrup". Plenty sweet. Tiny little bars, five or six to a box. It would be easy to eat the whole box, those six tiny little itty bitty bars.  

The glycemic load: 23 grams of digestible carbs. A glycemic index value of aprox 70 -- estimated from other granola bars with posted values. We don't have to be too precise ... but a GL of about 95. That is. A lot. A boxload. A whole day's worth of GL -- aday's worth typically ranges between 60 and 180, with the mean a tad below 100, say, 95.

So it's a GL of 16 per bar. That's a bowl of rice. Or take a bag of microwave popcorn.  No one eats a single serving. There are 2.5 "servings" in the bag -- but that's a crafty marketing trick. "See? A serving of our wonderful popcorn is only a mere inconsequential 160 calories!!!"  True. But the bag has two and a half "servings" -- 400 calories. Lies lies lies. The bag has a glycemic load, then, of 26. Adds up.

A berry smoothie might have a GL of about 8. A whole big blender full of nutrition, for free, in terms of insulin. That's the easy thing about it. The really nutritious food is free. It's the boxed treats that costs so much, metabolically.  

It's not hard, estimating glycemic load. Most people only eat 10 different meals. The meat doesn't count, or the fat. Protein certainly does count, re insulin, but NOT re blood sugar.  That's a different discussion.)  For blood sugar, it really is just the industrial carbs, and the hardcore starches -- potatoes and rice. After that it's a matter of estimating the serving size, and that's simple too. About the size of your palm? (Palm, without fingers or thumb or wrist.) About the size of your fist? (Palm, with fingers and thumb -- twice as much.) 

So it's a little bit of figuring, and then you know it. It's like writing a check to pay a bill -- a bit of a hassle, having to spell out those words and know the date and sign your name. Then again, it's the price you pay to pay the price you have to pay.

A can of coke has a GL of 15. At least granola bars have a nutrient somewhere in there.


FW

Supplements

Let’s start with the word itself. “Supplement”. Something you add, to enhance – not so much to complete, or it would be a “component.” Supplementation is what you do, after you’ve done everything that should be done. Point is, nutritional supplements are useful when the diet is inadequate.  In a society as affluent as ours, nobody has any business having an inadequate diet. Broccoli and potatoes, and the like, are cheap and highly nutritious. Wheat is easy to sprout. Carrot juice. All, cheap and easy.

 But let’s be real. Not potatoes: potato chips. Not carrot juice: cola drink. Cauliflower? What’s that?   And even given an attempt at a responsible diet, well, food isn’t what it used to be. We don’t need to distress ourselves about “organic” produce, to understand that commercial foods have been bred for appearance, taste and shelf-life, rather than for nutritional content.

 So supplements can be useful. No guarantees. Who knows what some particular individual needs. This is not about function or theory, not about the details of how things work or why they are necessary; just a list of good practices, that have been demonstrated to help some people some times. So, here follows a brief list of recommendations, always bearing in mind the practicalities of cost-benefits.

 Anti-inflammatories 

Almost all of our aches and pains are due to systemic inflammation. A healthy inflammatory response is necessary: it brings bloodflow, heat, nutrients, to local damage. Sadly, most folks have an unhealthy inflammatory response ... hysterical. Most of the over-the-counter painkillers are anti-inflammatory: NSAIDs = non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

 OMEGA 3 FISH OIL is the most potent nutritional anti-inflammatory around. Not the pills – all that surface area makes them rancid. Liquid, in a pint bottle, kept sealed in the refrigerator. Any healthfood store will have it, or shop around online. Mega dose: one or two or three tablespoons, in your morning berry smoothie, maybe? Neutral lemon flavor: does not taste fishy – if it does, it’s rancid. The results are, not infrequently, dramatic.

 Other easy-to-find herbal supplements, either highly anti-inflammatory or generally salubrious, are: turmeric, ginger, garlic, cayenne pepper, devils claw, cats claw, boswellia, feverfew.

Joint health

The anti-inflammatories are a big part of relieving joint pain, but more specifically, hyaluronic acid, which aids with regard to the gooey fluid that should be lubricating your hinges.  It's the biochmical that gives a rooster's comb its pert upthrust!  A good general supplement is "Joint Support" from Trader Joe's --  with glucosamine, chondroitin and MSM.  As with almost all supplements, the data are ambiguous regarding efficaciousness.  Maybe it's all snake oil.  But maybe not.

Digestive aids 

There’s hardly any point in eating, if you are not extracting meaningful nutrients from the effort. Anyone over a certain age will not be digesting their food properly. Sometimes the deadly aroma of what is left in the commode is just the result of an exotic side dish. Most frequently, it’s because food has not been digested and absorbed, but rather it has been chewed and then held inside your 98.6 degree intestinal tract for a day or two or three, rotting, putrefying, going rancid, fermenting, incubating hostile microbes, building up a stank like you're working for al-Qaeda. So ... digest your food.

 For any protein meal, HYDROCHLORIC ACID tablets may work wonders. Take one at the end of the meal, or more until you get an acid stomach, then one less. Pay the capitalists to do the work that your stomach refuses to do.

 For any cooked meal, take one or more DIGESTIVE ENZYME tablets at the beginning of the meal.  All foods contain their own enzymes, because all living things require enzymes, which do not die when the organism dies. Enzymes function as, uh, robot housekeepers – maintaining living things, breaking dead things down. Inside our bellies, that breaking-down is called digestion. When you cook the food you kill the enzymes. So what, you wonder? You make your own enzymes! Indeed you do, at the cost of having a pancreas three times larger than it should be. A theoretical reason why calorie-restriction is the ONLY proven method to extend longevity is that with fewer calories there is less of a digestive strain on the metabolism. An engine that runs cooler is more efficient. Point is, food without enzymes is indigestible. You can eat raw food, cook it and over-tax your pancreas, or pay the capitalists to make enzymes for you.

Other good practices 

PGX is a soluble fiber that mixes in with the bad carbs you've eaten and turns them into medium carbs.  Like oatmeal.  Doesn't add any nutrition, but it slows absorption down and avoids the insulin spike that is what makes bad carbs bad.  Take with a glass of water -- it's going to get gooey, and will take fluid from your tissue if not from the glass.

PROBIOTICS: something is going to live inside you. A statistic that’s common enough to be taken as true is that 90% of the DNA inside you is not human DNA. Microbes are orders of magnitude smaller than your own cells, and populate your gut, inevitably. Something IS going to live inside you. Do you want it to be, say, yeast and putrefactive bacteria, and suchlike enemies of humanity? – or beneficial symbiotes. It answers itself.  Best practice, store in refrigerator; take before bed on an empty stomach.

CHELATED MINERALS: “chelated” means the mineral is bonded to another molecule and is bio-available, rather than just a rock dug out of the ground. If we could thrive on dirt, we’d be plants.

VITAMINS: we all know it, but it bears repeating. Dead, cooked, processed food is dead. Sure, they put back some of the vitamins, but maybe their eye to quality isn’t that trustworthy? So take charge. Vitamins B, C and D suggest themselves as needing emphasis. Lots of controversy about dosages, which we need not enter into here. Just an interesting factoid: humans have the gene to make vitamin C, but that gene is mutated, broken, silent (also in all anthropoid primates, guinea pigs, some birds, some bats). The amount of vitamin C that animals daily make for themselves corresponds to about 8 grams, for humans. We don’t argue by analogy, but that doesn’t make analogies wrong.

 Weeping bitter tears of regret, after it’s too late, avails us nothing. We understand that there are no guarantees. Sometimes the best possible outcome is pretty bad. But it’s still the best. What, you want worse? So best practice will lead to best results, regardless of what the result is. A less-horrible disease? Good! I’ll take it! We don’t need perfection. We need diligence, which in the case of nutrition means responsible choices, with some supplementation.

 Be excellent.

FW

Cheats

Any food that has ever been a powder is a processed food. It's not just things that come in boxes. Bread, the staff of life, is a processed food, and depending on the artificiality of the ingredients, it can be more or less toxic. But it is processed, which means a great deal of the digesting has already been done, and all those calories are ready to flood into your bloodstream all at once, rather than trickle in, as chewing the grains would allow for. You see the point -- there can be a big hypoglycemic effect, sugar high and low, for anyone who has any sort of a weight issue.

Now hear this: PROCESSED FOODS ARE PRE-DIGESTED, AND AMOUNT TO INSTANT BLOOD SUGAR, WHICH TURNS INTO FAT. They're more than refined. We call them industrial carbs.

There is a way to unprocess the food. It is a cheat. It does not add nutrients, which should be the major reason for eating -- so the theory goes.  But reality is what it is, and sometimes we need to undo some of the folly we've indulged in.

Glucomannan is a vegetable fiber derived from konjac root, native to Asia. It does not dissolve in water, but rather forms a thick gooey gel. Konjac is sold as capsules under various product names, and expands to perhaps 100 times its original mass -- a gram (about the size of a vitamin pill) grows to the size of, um, a hamburger paddy.  Pretty amazing. This creates a sensation of fullness, but much more important in terms of health is that it regulates insulin.

There are two sorts of dietary fiber, soluble and insoluble. The insoluble kind adds bulk and roughage, which is necessary for healthy elimination. And there actually is a nutritional element, in providing energy to the cells of the colon -- but that's pretty obscure. Soluble fiber absorbs water inside the digestive tract, and becomes, as it were, sticky. The benefit of this is that the gel mixes with processed foods and slows down the absorption of sugar. See?

Adding soluble fiber somewhat undoes the hypoglycemic effect. Birthday boy still ate all that cake with no meaningful nutrients and all those calories, but if he supplements some soluble fiber the industrial carbs  won't go racing into his bloodsteam causing a hysterical insulin response. It's as if he ate little pieces of cake, over five hours, rather than a big piece all at once. He won't be burning the fat he already has, but he won't be adding new fat either, the way he would have without the fiber.

It's a cheat.  He should have eaten nutritious food. Why didn't he? Shame! For shame! But he already knew that. Once the blame is out of the way, and the guilt, and the self-loathing and defensiveness, we can get practical. Take a soluble fiber pill -- there's one marketed under the name PGX. It doesn't make a bad diet good, but it makes it less damaging. That's a sort of good.  Because it makes a very real difference.  Real fat loss of about a pound a week occurs, making no lifestyle changes at all, save a pill before each meal.

It's not a good thing to eat poorly and then try to undo the damage. Eat properly. Nutrient-dense, calorie-poor foods. But we do live in the real world. So if you cheat on your diet, cheat again. Two wrongs don't make it right, but the second makes the first less wrong.

Another soluble fiber is psyllium, the active ingredient of Metamucil. Yes, it makes you go to the toilet. You can pick it up as Psyllium at Trader Joe's, cheap, and scoop it over your Lucky Charms. It's not as thick and gooey as konjac, and doesn't come in capsules, and it's less expansive.  But it has the same healthful benefit as konjac.

The solid research is pretty interesting. Supplementing with these soluble fibers can have positive effects on constipation, intestinal gas, diarrhea, hemorrhoids, ahem, anal fissures, Crohn's disease (inflamed bowel), IBS and colon cancer. It's all so very excretory, true. It has a beneficial effect on hyperglycemia (pre-diabetes), obesity, cholesterol levels, and it inhibits dietary fat from being absorbed. Digestion is more complicated than thinking. Entertain your bowels, the way you do your mind.

The other cheat we'll mention is Omega-3. We've already looked at it in depth. Here, enough to note that it undoes some of the poisonous effects of a diet high in inflammatory fats -- which is the standard American diet.  SAD.  Point is, when wrong foods have been indulged in, do what you can to undo the damage.

Adolescents are idealistic. They still believe in perfection, as small children believe in Santa Claus. When we become mature, we put away childish things and try to see the world as it is. Not dark, not cynical. Realistic. Pragmatic. Within which worldview, there is ample room for optimism.

Consider the myth of Pandora's Box. A superficial understanding would see the tale as teaching the folly of curiosity, or the foolishness and primal guilt of women, or the inevitable doom that justifies our darkest forebodings. Misses the point. The point is this: after every evil thing had spilled like shards of glass from that Box -- pestilence and catastrophe and atrocity -- the last thing to emerge was something wonderful.

Hope.

Perfection? Please. Perfection is static, and we are always changing. We don't trouble ourselves with perfection, but we strive for excellence. Such a great difference, in such a small shift in outlook. It makes us smile.

We strive then to be beautiful, in our character and our actions and in our health. If you have remained too long, sitting -- if you've remained too long, sitting at the dinner table ... well? Have hope. Take heart. Take heart by taking action.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

More Endless Harping On and On about Diet Again

 It's not a health kick. It's not kicks with us, hepcat. We just roll with health. Like about How Things Work, or about how wrong Conventional Wisdom is.

It appears that there's some controversy re diet among medical professionals. Hm. That says it right there. Medical -- as in medicine. What does medicine have to do with health? It has to do with sickness. The disease care system. Once you're sick, well, something to do with barn doors and horses. When you're way sick, medicines are good. Why did you get sick though? Because you failed to realize that you are made out of what you eat. If you're sick, non-infectious sick, it may have something to do with the fact that you've used substandard material in the manufacture, construction and/or assembly of your body.

A simple observation: There are three macronutrients -- proteins, fats and carbs. Your body never has needed and never will need, or use, dietary protein; it needs amino acids, essential amino acids, which you must get through diet.

Your body absolutely needs fat, certain kinds of fats -- the essential fatty acids, most notably omega 3. Other forms of fat are 1) beneficial nutrients (say, oleic acid), or neutral concentrated energy -- and this includes saturated fats, even from animal sources -- or 2) flatout poisons, like transfats, or omega 6 in too high amounts.

Likewise with carbs. There is no essential carbohydrate. All carbs break down into glucose. You must have glucose -- it's brain and organ food -- but you can make it out of protein. On the other hand, the plant nutrients that come along with carbs (plants) ... the phytonutrients ... you must must must eat these. Which ones? That's a judgment call. But eating too few plant-based nutrients is called malnutrition.

There are essential amino acids, but no essential proteins. You digest proteins into amino acids, which you build up into proteins. Sadly, there are poisonous proteins, commonly eaten -- those of animal origin, per The China Study. In moderation, they are unlikely to be dangerous, and even less likely if they are thoroughly digested, via properly produced stomach HCl. In excess and improperly digested, animal proteins can aggravate an auto-immune response, where your body designs antibodies to destroy any partially or non-digested alien proteins that have leaked into your bloodstream; consequently your immune system may learn to attack your own, similar (animal) proteins. A theory, but one that makes a lot of sense.

Likewise, there are essential fats. You must eat them. But when eaten in disproportionate, unnatural amounts, they become toxic. We've looked at this before. Too many vegetable oils and you get a hysterical inflammation response. It is the scourge of the American diet. Poisonous.

As for carbs, there is no essential carb. What is essential in this case is moderation. Because an excess of factory carbs, industrial carbs -- that is, sugars and refined grains ... concentrated and instant carbs -- wreaks havoc with insulin, which is a master hormone.

Hormones are involved in one or more of four bodily functions: maintaining homeostasis; producing, utilizing or storing energy; reproduction; growth and development. Remember it as HERG, but that is neither here nor there. What is here and there is that insulin is involved in all of these, and too many carbs really, really really mess insulin up.

Which is the worst? Animal proteins that putrefy in your gut and can get into your bloodsteam, not so very different than viruses and bacteria? Fats that can inflame you or, as transfats, take the place of good fats but do a worse than useless job? Carbs, that in excess will cause diabetes and heart disease and virtually all of the modern black death of diseases associated with the Western and American diet? Well, choose your poison. It hardly matters. Most toxic, it seems, is carbs, though. Sweet poison.

We don't have to be perfect. We should be sensible. In the Old Testament the Divine Architect of the Universe and Most High Lord God Almighty appointed seven (7) annual feasts unto the Hebrews. Maybe that's how often we should indulge in these common dietary poisons. Just a ballpark estimate. That seems like moderation. Meantime, call to mind the thing that you don't want to live without. That thick bloody slab of steak, or the heaping mounds of ice cream, or the delectable sponginess of your cakes and pastries.

Whatever it is, that's your addiction. Do you like being an addict? Does that make you feel good? Are you happy about that? Shame! Shame!!! 

*ahem* 

 You know the course it takes. Increasing abuse, then death. Would you like an intervention? Beats a funeral.

Ah well. It's all just so interesting. Knowledge is power. In this case, the power to reclaim your body away from illness, snatched from the Jaws of Death, and lead it into the Glorious Light of Vibrant Health! Exclamation point! Well, at least into feeling better. That's a good thing. Start with moderation. Develop common sense.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Cookies

There is nothing more emotional than food. It is the first comfort. We come crying from the womb, and whatever sensual pleasure there may be in nursing, it is overwhelmed by the confounding pleasure of nourishment -- the sweet warm flow of milk, it soothes our natal tears. And when we cry as children, we are silenced with a cookie. And we have, with every Christmas memory, every Thanksgiving memory, or Halloween, or Easter or Passover, the inseparable associations of food. Their smells make our mouths water. It is hospitality. It is celebration. No wedding, no birthday, without cake. Midnight pizza, when sleep won't come. Midnight ice cream, to comfort our broken hearts. Thus, a necessity is a compulsion. No wonder two thirds of Americans are overweight.

To change your diet is to change your self. Not an easy thing. Take obesity. It's a tough thing for a lot of reasons, but most obviously because it speaks so publicly of a vice. We all have secret indulgences. They do not however hang from our ribs in billowing folds. If we lust, or rage, or inject heroin into our veins, we can often keep it secret. You can't, however, hide 100 extra pounds.

But to call yourself back from that extreme -- to face the problem and find the courage and integrity to fight it, and prevail -- this is honorable. It is a kind of redemption. Someone let himself go, he's damaged his health, he's borne the judgment and mockery of those whose vices are not so obvious. But now he's started the long, the grueling climb back to where he wants to be. Sensible diet, sensible exercise. Maybe he won't get all the way. But he's moving. Godspeed.

How to do it? Let's not say dieting, but rather nutriating. The idea is to look for nutrient-dense food. Some foods have lots of calories and hardly anything else. Grains, believe it or not. Mostly calories. A bit of nutrition in the bran, in the germ, but the body is just nothing but calories. Which is great, if you live in a Neolithic village. On the other hand, berries are just little nutrition troves. We should eat them even if they tasted like sawdust. They're that necessary. And we know, we know that some cancers are deficiency diseases. Berri berri, rickets, scurvy -- banished, because there is a vitamin to take. It's so easy.

Upshot is, it is a wonderful thing, the way we turn food not just into energy, but health. Or sickness. Look up "enteric system." Here, say. The whole complex digestive system. Your brain is made up of neurons. There are as many neurons associated with the enteric system as with the brain. A trillion, each. Ever wonder about butterflies in the stomach? It has to do with the neurotransmitter, serotonin. Your gut uses more serotonin than your brain. How odd. No, not just wonderful, this process. More than that.

But sometimes appetite gets to us. And you eat some cookies. A whole bag of cookies. All at once. One after the other. They are delicious. Large and moist, with chocolate chips. Delicious. So sweet and so tasty. Mmm. Vegan cookies. All natural. No sucrose. No harsh or caustic chemicals. Earth friendly, to help Save the Planet. And the next day you wake up with a slightly sore throat. A little shaky. A little mucusy. Kind of weak. So you take the day off. But the cookies. The cookies. They were so tasty. So sweet.

You do not regret it. You'd do it again.

Ach. Humans. Those guys. Gotta love 'em.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Recipes --

-- by which is meant the things you should do to increase the rationality, quality and/or hygiene of your life:

1. Never pet a stray cat with a wet tail.

2. If you shave your head, be sure to shave your back too.

3. Eat properly.

Okay, maybe those first two aren't all that universally practical. But eating properly is a "GOOD IDEA". Eat good meals. By "meals", we mean meals of excellent nutrition. Not just food -- nutrition. Anything you can eat -- that is, anything you can fit into your mouth might be called food. Yuck. By meals, we also mean meals of an appropriate quantity. Never eat more than you can carry. Never swallow anything bigger than your head.

An excellent breakfast is a berry smoothie. Very easy, and superb nutrition.  A pre-mixed frozen pound of  blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries ... cherries; if fat-loss is the goal, NOT mango, pineapple, kiwi, banana, sweet, tropical.  Blend it with however much water will give the consistency you prefer; NOT any other beverage, milk or juice (soy, almond, rice, apple, pomegranate...). Add protein powder, not more than 30 grams if it's for a single mean -- NOT whey unless weight GAIN is the point.  Some flax seed oil or Omega-3 fish oil, 2 or 3 tablespoons (NOT the pills -- liquid).  Those are the four major ingredients: mixed berries, protein, good fat, water.  Extras for nutritional benefit such as cinnamon, goji, probiotics, etc.

The ORAC value is off the charts (google "orac antioxidant"). Amazingly low in calories -- the oils bring it up, but they are essential. Flax seed oil is a precursor to the Omega-3 EFAs (google "efa epa dha", or just look at Wikipedia).  There are satiation receptors in the brain that monitor for fats -- they help you figure out you're not hungry.

Another meal, as often as you like, is a simple vegetable stew/stirfry/steam. Frozen broccoli, cauliflower, mixed peppers, green beans and string beans and carrotscorn and peas and whatever else catches your eye -- fibrous vegetables. Bring to a boil etc, chop in tomato, etc, and some protein to taste.

Pretty boring and not so flavorful. Add seasonings -- apple cider vinegar, a splash of extra-virgin olive oil, turmeric (anti-inflammatory), cayenne pepper (good for you ... hot), cinnamon (weirdly, it increases your insulin receptivity -- good), basil, oregano, parsley, any other herbs or spices that catch your eye, and something called Bragg Liquid Aminos -- very savory.

There's the hunger of an empty belly, which isn't hunger at all.  There's the hunger from an energy-depleted bloodsteam, no matter how much you eat, because of an insulin imbalance -- we'll look at that some other time. Then there's the hunger from not getting enough nutrients -- biochems that your body needs to build and repair itself. The standard American diet -- SAD -- is really good at causing high-calorie malnutrition. Empty calories.

Calories, from a responsible perspective, are not the defining characteristic of food. Nutrients. It's the difference between eating, say, sugar (all digestible carbs break down into glucose) on the one hand,  and on the other, (complex) veggies and fruits and berries, beans, nuts, etc.  One will, eventually, make you sick and kill you. Literally. The other can bring optimal health -- phytonutrients. Empty calories, opposed to nutrient-dense calories.

There are plenty of easy-to-read books on intelligent nutrition. SuperFoods Rx. Not moonbeam, not vegetarian. "How Not to Die." You don't have to be vegetarian. The point is, health is not magic. We build it, out of nutrients, and exercise and lifestyle. Health has to do with prudence. Food can kill OR sustain you. Be moderate, which means reasonable and responsible.  When you notice results, it becomes easier. Then it becomes the only way to be.

Exercise.

Diet is on you. It's like solitaire. You can cheat. Well ... go ahead. But play fair, too, most of the time. These are the compromises we make -- it seems like a good thing to make as  few as possible.

4. Never reply to an email from an exiled Nigerian bank president.

5. Be excellent.


FW

Dances with Polar Bears

There is no difference between animal and plant fat. At pharmaceutically refined levels, pure, the oleic or palmeic acid in pork is the same as that in olive or coconut oil. They are chemically identical. No difference. So the willowy vegetarians don’t have that particular high horse to look down their long noses from. If there is any meaningful health problem with meat, it isn’t the fat content. Which it isn’t.

The problem with meat must lie in one or both of two areas. The first problem is in the gut: as the effect of noxious corpse-eating bacteria and all their ghastly toxic waste products; and as the lack of fiber, which clogs you up and lets the putrifiers have an extended two-day fiesta cruise down your alimentary canal. The other problem is in the bloodstream -- the toxic effect of undigested animal proteins that leak  through the gut wall. In the blood they are treated as invaders, attacked with antigens, which may learn to attack one’s own proteins, leading to autoimmune disorders. To be fair, the leaky gut is caused by refined carbs -- yeast infestation.

There are other problems, not controversial. Meat is the end of the food chain, and therefore it is the garbage dump of every environmental pollutant in the system -- strontium and pesticides and dioxins and bovine spongiforms. And then there’s the byproducts of the animal’s metabolism itself -- urea and feminizing hormones and adrenalin and so on. No one can think these are good. Almost no one.

But Eskimos don't get scurvy. The claim that they eat no plant products, in their traditional diet, seems unlikely. One of the thing vegetarians think they know is that the first thing Eskimos eat when they kill an animal is the contents of the stomach and intestinal tract. Plants, don't you know. Organs too. They throw the meat to the dogs. So the story goes. The other story, though, is that they eat no plant material. Let's just accept the fact that both are true, and not argue.

The fact that the Kenyan Maasai eat very much dairy and hunted meats, and have the worst life expectancy in the modern world may be due to dirty drinking water. That their life expectancy for men is 42 years could be due to the fact that they live in, well, Africa. That they have had, historically, less than a 50% chance of living past 60 is, um, racist. Blood diamonds.

Let's not trouble ourselves with having to defend or attack bigtime meat-eating. Because the issue is not whether or not humans can eat a lot of meat, or solely meat. The issue is, what is optimal.

Let's grant that meat provides every known necessary nutrient, including Vitamin C and glucose (via muscular glycogen). How about the unnecessary ones? Does meat have any meaningful antioxidants? Because meat makes them more necessary. Heat is generated just because digestion occurs. It's called diet induced thermogenesis, DIT. Protein is most wasteful in this regard. It's fuel to the flames, and where there's fire there's smoke, and, uh, smoke is pollution.

Tests show that fat digestion wastes only 0 to 3% of its calories as heat; carbs waste 5 to 10%; protein wastes 20 to 30%; alcohol wastes 10 to 30%. Healthy subjects with a mixed diet burn about 10% of their calories as heat. Protein and fat are most closely linked to satiety -- knowing when to stop. For fat, this would be because FFAs in the bloodstream create a buffer, that allows the body to know there's no famine. It's safe to stop. For protein, perhaps that the sheer amount of work it takes to digest these most difficult molecules creates a signal to stop eating -- enough already -- perhaps through the excess waste heat, or perhaps through the digestive cells themselves, and their depletion of energy.

So, back to what is optimal. Does exhausting your digestive system seem like a good thing? Does making more pollution in your body? -- via the free radicals produced by wasted effort? Does it seem wise to increase the need for the antioxidants that damp down this pollution, while at the same time refusing to eat the plant sources that are so rich in these nutrients? Does it make sense to be the carrion eater? The best place on the food chain to be is the place where you don't get eaten, not where you eat all the other animals. The best place is where you can choose wisely, apart from appetite.

It's bad to eat refined, industrial carbs because they cause a hysterical and eventually pathological insulin response. It's also bad because glucose results in glycerol, which is the glue that holds blubber together. But blubber isn't everone's problem. Should they then eat more meat? Or any at all? Clearly, clearly, an Atkins-like diet will almost always result in the loss of from one to three pounds a week of fat. Calorie restriction, semi-starvation, diets with "carbs" result in hunger, lethargy, fatigue, muscle wasting, depression, self loathing, guilt, futility, failure, etc. But even so, Atkins and his ilk are wrong.

Wrong because it isn't carbs that's the problem. It's nutritionless, fiberless carbs. Most especially, such carbs poured into an already disrupted bloodstream. In extreme and very rare cases, a meat-only diet is  supportable -- if the whole foods vegan diet somehow fails. But that must be a small fraction of a small percent of the human population. Anyone that sick is close to terminal. Short of that point, however, a healthful diet should be rich rich rich with "carbs" -- not starches, not refined grains, nothing powdered. All of that is either predigested, or almost digested. Might as well open a vein and sprinkle in sugar. Real food. Like what Adam would have eaten. You remember Adam? He's the guy God made to live in and tend a Garden, with associated trees.

Why so extreme. Everybody needs glucose, and glycerol, and triglycerides. Everyone needs as many antioxidants as they can get. Nobody needs refined carbs, and hardly anyone needs meat. Because it's not about what we can get away with. It's not about the absence of actual disease in Eskimos or their Caucasian Dances with Polar Bears interlopers. It's about longevity accompanied intimately by vitality. Eskimos are not noted for the number of their centenarians. Maybe it has something to do with unnecessary nutrients.

So much about diet, here, now. What about exercise? Both matter. Diet is about health. Exercise is about fitness. Both matter. There's a great deal of overlap. And both, really are easy. What's hard about being sensible? Hardly anything. It's just that emotion and ignorance get in the way. Rationality helps with both.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Carbs, Inc, Etc.

Food as medicine. We already know it's a drug, but how about its ability to actually make us well? What does a lifetime of having gooey putrefaction oozing sluggishly through your digestive tract do? -- feeding and breeding toxic bacteria so you can absorb their waste products. Brr.

Consider, N, a very serious athlete, working toward world-class status. He understands that diet is utterly pivotal. He's eating far fewer carbs -- by which we mean, mostly, grains. The math of his diet works out to 430 calories from carbs (almost all from fruits and vegetables) -- 22%; 500 from protein -- 28%; 970 from fat -- 50%. Total calories, 1900. Aprox.

That's A LOT of fat. A lot of protein too. And yet. And yet it's working very well. "All of my fats,” he says, “are derived from nuts, olive oil, coconut oil, avocados and occasionally flax or organic butter in smaller quantities. I don't count fish oil supplementation into my daily fat intake. If I drop my fat, I immediately feel it and am hungry. I find it impossible to eat any more carbs unless I eat a lot of fruit." Don't you wish you had that problem?

"I've been doing it for 3 weeks and have leaned out more, increased my output and my heart rate has steadily dropped. I weigh in consistently at about 183 but am as strong (actually stronger) as I was at 203. I have very strong mental clarity and focus."

Other athletes, less cognizant of diet, wake up feeling like they've slept in a cement mixer.

"I think post-workout nutrition is way overlooked in terms of recovery. When my PW nutrition is solid, I never get sore. My PW meal doesn't count towards my day blocks."

See? It's rational. It's purposeful. And most of all, it's effective. The way doctors fiddle with a patient's medication dosages? The same thing is possible with food. It's just a matter of being methodical. Problem is, nothing is as emotional as food. Might as well tell an addict to be methodical with his heroin injections. They're not called dope fiends for nothing. They are still called dope fiends, right? Donut fiends.

"Right now I have one cheat meal a week on Thursday nights. I have everything dialed in so specifically it's ridiculous; but it's so easy now -- second nature. After I eat my one little cheat meal my veins stick out like crazy. Also, since I don't binge on my cheat meals anymore, I don't have a noticeable increase in morning heart rate or the bodyweight fluctuations anymore."

Veins sticking out is a sign of metabolic stress. Why would eating stress you that much? Imbalance, of course.

N mentions a supplement called Resveretrol. It "activates the same genes that calorie restriction does [which increases longevity], only without the calorie restriction. It's taken from stressed grapes that fight off molds and fungus. In eating the stressed grape skins, we activate the genes that are responsible for survival, mimicking the benefits of calorie restriction." Could be. Calorie restriction is the only proven method of vastly increasing vital longevity. There must be genes responsible for that.

Here's the things. Animal proteins are sort of poisonous. If there is such a thing as auto-immune disease, animal products are a major factor. And they are very hard to digest -- like using your gas just to make your motor hot, rather than make it go. Indeed, we do not need protein at all. We need amino acids, the building blocks of protein. We don't need them just to make tissues -- we need them as peptides, as hormones, as neurotransmitters. If we could get that ratio right, well, it would be ideal, the way right things are ideal.

Same with carbs. All carbs break down into glucose. That's a lot of eating, just for the sugar. A lot of health problems, too. It's not the carbs. That's the wrong emphasis. It's the phytonutrients, the chemicals in plants that do all that protecting against mold and bugs and viruses and, uh, cosmic rays. Get those in the right amount, and you will be sure to get all the carbs, the glucose that you need.

Same with fats. Fats are just calories, which is just heat. Heat is, usually, the enemy of an engine. It's not about the calories. Calories are not a problem in our society -- not too few calories, anyway. It's the kind of fat. Point is, there are essential fatty acids from which your body makes hormones. If we get too much of one sort of fat, we get too much of certain kinds of hormones. We get too much omega 6 -- substrate of the inflammatory hormones. So use no vegetable oils unless you think inflammation is a really good thing for you, and use much much more omega 3 -- because anti-inflammatory hormones make you feel so good.

See? We've been propagandized, or at least miseducated, into thinking in terms of proteins and carbs and fat, when it should be amino acids and phytonutrients and omega 3. We think about calories instead of nutrients. If we think of nutrients at all, it's only as vitamins and minerals -- the stuff you can get in superscientifical formulas from the futuristic Atomic Age of the ultra modern Nineteen Fifties, when nutrition was invented and all our food was pills!

It just seems a bit unthoughtful, though, doesn't it? Think of it this way. Almost all of the nutrients that a cow eats are not available to you by eating its flesh. Yes, some of the vitamins and probably more of the minerals are transferred to you through the bloodburger, but all, all, all of the phytonutrients have been used up, burned up, by the cow to make its own flesh. Nothing left for you but the flesh, and you can't build out of ashes, if you get the point.

It’s not about being vegetarian. That’s not for everyone. Be happy. But be sensible too. A big heaping plate of spaghetti -- does this seem sensible? A thick slab of beef meat -- does this seem wise on a daily basis? It’s about the nutrients. You are made out of what you eat. If you’d like some help, getting things in order -- well, no one else can change your diet. No one can do the exercise for you. But if you’d like the information and the expertise, that’s what we do.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

GI Tractate

This is just some basic stuff. The glycemic index, GI, tells how fast a given food turns into bloodsugar, on a scale of 0 to 100. Lower is slower, which is better. It's like octane for fuel. Higher is hotter. The raw score however doesn't tell us much of practical value. How much after all of the food, or fuel, do we have? No info. GI tells you about how fast a carb turns into bloodsugar, whether a gram or a pound, not about how much of that carb -- how many calories -- you've eaten.

So the practical approach involves glycemic load, which calculates the bloodsugar effect of a carb serving you actually might use. Honey, for example, has a fairly low glycemic index, but if you eat a bowl of it, it's not so good -- the load would be very high indeed. The index is an unchanged absolute, a constant; the load varies with appetite.

Glycemic load then, GL, takes into account serving sizes, the same way gallons count when we talk about fuel. In thinking about miles per gallon, both miles and gallons matter. Each GL point corresponds to the body's response to one gram of glucose. A typical diet includes about a hundred GL points each day, ranging between 60 and 180. Lower is better. For an individual food, a score of  under 10 is low, good, between 10 and 20 is moderate, and over 20 is high, bad.

Spaghetti has a GL value of 21 (GI of about 50). Brown rice 16 (≈ 70 GI), white rice 30 (≈ 75). You can see that rice white or brown looks pretty much the same from a GI POV, but it's twice as bad in its actual effect on insulin, for amounts you are likely to eat. A "serving." Carrots, grapes, 7 (and both about 45 GI). A donut, 17 (≈ 75). Do you eat just one donut? Three donuts is a GL of 50, and the GI is still 17.

Raisins 28 (≈ 65). Strawberries 1 (≈ 40). Brocolli, califlower, peppers, nuts -- zero.

Here is an index for GL values. This is a site that gives GI values. This is a site that lists too many values for GI and GL. Just more foods than most of the world has ever even heard of. This is that same info, in spreadsheet form. Most of the world don't know nothing about no spreadsheet, but some people seem to think it's useful.

They're crazy of course, but it takes a village.  Don't be crazy.  Be civilized.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Everything There Is to Know about Diet, Part Two

Perhaps, as is the bias of some incomparably knowledgeable authorities, a purely vegetarian diet is likely to be optimal for some large fraction of humanity. Indeed, ideally, only nutrients that can no longer be found in plants should or could come from animals, if any. Are there any? -- any essential nutrients that can come to us only via animals? Well, vitamin B-12? But that's from a bacteria, and only secondhand through animals. Even so, if that's it, that's it. But it's in Brewers yeast. So that's it.

 Anything else supposed to be unique from animals? Omega-3? Well, yes and no. We make it ourselves. But the health benefits are very real indeed. Someone with an ideal diet, however, wouldn't need to supplement with fish oil. Anything else? Think hard.

 The rest of it, re the philosophy of diet, of functioning and performance, and common sense and ethics, well, these are easy. Whatever works.  The China Study  tells  tells us that animal products are powerfully correlated to degenerative diseases.

That's functioning. Performance is a more difficult issue -- it seems clear that protein is a performance enhancer, and animal products are an easy if not actually dense source of amino acids.

 Common sense? Ahem. Yeah, it's good to eat something that will kill you if you leave it in the sun too long. Something that stinks to make you puke is really good food. The deader the better in fact ... put thick woolly hair on your chest ... make you strong like bull! 

 Ethics? Let me kill you and eat your body because, well, because I like the way you taste. Yum.

 Is it demonstrated, conclusively or by inference, that animal flesh, its "high-quality" protein, results in better performance? One is unaware of such evidence, although the argument is common. Perhaps it's true though? Never argue with reality. The reason for such an outcome, if true, would be that subclinical putrefaction is mildly toxic, and excites a moderate stimulatory stress response in digesting organism -- which would augments performance, short-term. It would be a seasonal benefit with a delayed downside, as in precipitated degeneration in later decades. Like WWII pilots using methamphetamine on long-range bombing runs. Meth saved the world from Hitler. That doesn't make it good.

 Type two diabetes is the over-stress and eventual disruption of pancreatic function. Adrenal fatigue, likewise, of the adrenals. Digestive decline as well ... decades of abusing the enteric system with hard-to-digest consumables lead to a middle- and old-age filled with gastronomic nightmares.

 What we know is that here is a lot of nonsense involved in the whole area of nutrition. Lots of emotion, lots of extremely shoddy thinking. Diet is a profoundly religious thing. We know that disease has a number of causes -- bacterial and viral, genetic and chemical -- but that a if not the major cause of disease in our own culture comes from a diet that is nothing but slow poison. Too many carbs, and too much animal stuff.

 So, does it matter, talk about apemen or Eden? -- matter in some way other than philosopho-religio-theoretically? We want an open mind regarding what is best for our health. False assumptions might lead us to healthful conduct. True assumptions seem more likely to. But anything that closes our minds to behavior that would improve our lives, is a thing to be avoided. Track records matter; long-term results matter. Success is a convincing kind of authority. Find models of success, and copy them.

 Health and performance, and physical beauty and power, are not merely the outworking of genetic happenstance. We can't change our bones, but we can help what hangs off of them. We can't help our features, but we can preserve youth -- that is, delay decay -- with the due diligence that we owe to our progenitors who cared for us enough that we've gotten as far through life as we have, and that we owe to our offspring, who will grieve for our ill-health at least as deeply as we would grieve for ourselves. Health is a duty.

 Rule Five: "You may freely eat of every thing that you can fit into your mouth and swallow, but many of them will kill you, fast or slow." (See Rule Two.)

 Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

 FW CrossFit Burbank

Everything There Is to Know about Diet, Part One

It's not as much as one might suppose. Let's see. History, functioning, and common sense/ethics.

What is the ideal human diet. That's a history question, depending on whether we were Created by God Almighty, Divine Protoprogenitor ,  or Evolved through Random Chance from Primordial Slime which Itself Appeared from Virtual Potentialities for No Reason. That's the philosophical heart of the matter. Did we Evolve via Naturally Selected Haphazard Mutations, that whatever nutrients were available were what we adapted ourselves solipsistically  to need? -- and what wasn't available we Evolved out of a need for? Or were we Designed, as by some God, Superlative Architect of the Cosmos, to need whatever it is we need -- and sometimes we get that and sometimes we don't, but it's a fixed need, with only a fixed, genetically-determined capacity for variability?

If Evolved, then the "Paleolithic Diet" is correct or nearly so -- determined by observations of what modern but tribal, hunter-gatherer societies have access to. Because modern stone age cultures would be reasonably similar to ancient ones --  ignoring any ice ages or other actual millennia-long climate disruptions -- and from such cultures we would have Evolved. If it's true, it's true. Never argue with what's true. Is it? If so, what is the evidence, for this dietary theory? The evidence is  the fact that modernday hunter-gather cultures eat as they do. In other words, the argument begs the question, and the reasoning is circular.

Well there's hardly any other option.  What, God!? -- in a Garden!?!  LOL. We are far to sophisticated and scientifical to believe in that sort of hokus pokus.  Really.  Please.   Space aliens then -- much more logical  -- genetically manipulating us in a lab on the mother ship from behind the moon?  But, har dee har.  Um, breaking through from some other universe or dimension, uh, and somehow, er ... well, that one's not going anywhere.

Upshot is, origins are irrelevant. Philosophy is irrelevant.  Results matter, which are dependent on behavior.  But if there were an ideal diet that was meant to sustain the species, we might feel, from our modern bias and custom, that it was not a hunter-gatherer diet, of grubs and beetles, tapir, sloth and shrew --  nor was it an agricultural one of powdered grains. Something else, entirely.

If we suppose there are rules -- sort of the opposite of randomness -- that, say, the space aliens embedded in our genome, Rule One might be thus: "I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food." Things that grow on the ground and have seeds; things that grow in trees and have seeds. Cucumbers; tomatoes; squash -- herbs that have seeds ... they are fruits.

Rule Two: "You may freely eat of every tree, but there is some type that will kill you." So we have free will, regarding what we may eat -- but not everything that may be eaten, should be eaten. Diet affects our health. You heard it here first.

If there are rules  as from a rule book, then human food would be tree food and  ground food, with seeds. As it were, fruit. Coincidentally, fruit and berries and less obvious fruits are purposed, unlike virtually every other food, to be eaten. That's the deal the plant makes: you can eat my fruit if/because you spread my seeds. Pretty clever, eh?

Leaves are meant to convert sunlight into sugar, and may be eaten. Vegetables are meant to be the body of a plant, and may be eaten. Roots are meant to pull up water and minerals, and may be eaten. Tubers are meant to store energy for the plant, and may be eaten. Grains/seeds/nuts are meant to grow into another plant, and may be eaten. Flesh is meant to be the body of an animal, and may be eaten. Eggs and milk ... well, you know.  Contrariwise, the purpose of fruit is to be food.

Cucumbers, tomatoes, melons, pumpkins, lychee nuts, dates, chili peppers, nuts -- they are fruit. Apples? Alas. We have the same needs as always, but not the same resources nor even the same world.  We do not after all live in a garden.  Apples nowadays, as with so many commercially grown foods, are hybridized for flavor and appearance and shelf-life, not for nutritional content.

And behold, Rule Three: "You shall eat the herb of the field." Thus, the invention of agriculture. The orchard-tender, or again the berry-eating shrew-like scampering underbrush creature, becomes a farmer.  Still plant-based, but second-best. as we knew  anyway: too many carbs/grains will make you fat.

In a harsh and uncooperative world, sadly, essential nutritional resources become rare or extinct. There have been mass extinctions.  There are droughts and floods and blights, and global warmings and coolings.  Thus, Rule Four: "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. You are given all creatures, even as the green herbs."

What to eat, during an Ice Age or its searing hardpan Global Warming counterpart, or your short-term merely decades long deforestation events like lava floes and catastrophic floods? Eat animals, which can scavenge on debris and carrion.  Point is, we eat meat because we can, especially in the absence of something better. And some better things are certainly absent, cf mass-extinctions. Who can say what nutritionally superb fruits and herbs and seeds and fungi are now extinct. Who can say how much longer we'd live, with vibrant health, if these lost but essential nutrients were not extinct.

Maybe we came from apes and shrews and lizards and fish and germs and inorganic matter that was stuck by lightning. Sounds like a theory.  Maybe we came from dust and the breath of God, another theory.  No matter.  What matters is what works.

No matter if it;s a hunter-gatherer diet of grubs and sap and roots and reptiles and monkeys and bark and mold and algae and salamanders over hundreds of  thousand or millions of years, or a human diet of fruits and berries and herbs and agriculture.  Upshot is, there be an ideal human diet, optimal for health and performance. Diet can be optimized within existing if irreparable limits.

It's not about dogma.  It's pragmatism.  What works?  Do that thing.  Thus, CrossFit -- highly eclectic, completely practical, in theory devoid of theory, although, as people we do love our answers.  There is a CrossFit for diet, an optimal set of behaviors, hard perhaps to identify, and changing perhaps over time, but identifiable with experience and diligence.  Paleo, or vegan, or Intermitant Fasting, or some other thing or combination.  Be bold and resolute, and maybe and maybe not bloody.

Rough and ready definition of CrossFit: constantly varied functional movements at high intensity.   Works with nutrition as well: a wide variety of calorie-poor/nutrient-dense foods of high quality.  So there it is.  Serious people are serious.  Well?

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Industrial Carbs

If chronically elevated insulin levels have an almost one to one correlation to excess body fat, how do we account for thin diabetics? You can look at someone and know the state of their pancreatic activity by the size of their gut. Insulin is a storage hormone -- the storage hormone -- and the more you make of it, the more you are storing. That’s why it’s an imbalance. So how can there be thin prediabetics. The answer is  that despite the imbalance, they’ve found some sort of homeostasis in cells that are disproportionately insensitive to insulin.  Understand, without any insulin at all, diabetics would starve to death no matter how much they ate.

Consider the mechanism that allows starving people to digest all their muscle tissue, until they get to the heart, at which point the heart is catabolized, and they die -- all the while retaining body fat. They can starve to death and still be obese. Emaciated and fat, at the same time. Clearly the adipose tissue is morbidly, fatally dysfunctional. It has to do with pathologically raised insulin, that stands guard, as it were, outside a fat cell and forces free fatty acids back into the cell rather than allow them into the bloodstream.

The problem boils down to carbs. Not a great word, at all, carbs. Food is carbs. Carbohydrates are the ultimate source of all nutrients. Yeah yeah, sun and soil, but no, plants, and thence to animals. Common usage has determined that carbs refers to refined carbs, sugars and starches. And these are, indeed, the problem. A potato isn’t the problem. But potato chips and pasta and flour and white rice and grain flakes disguised as breakfast and coated with sucrose and fructose and syrup -- well, it’s a bit much. All of it comes from the factory. That’s the problem. Glucose shouldn’t be industrial strength.

Low cholesterol is  more a function of carb metabolism than of fat intake. Same with triglycerides. There are tests that directly measure insulin levels. A HOMA test.  An hsCRP test, for inflammation. An HbA1c test.  But it's easy to know.  Eyeball it. Visible body fat is a profound indicator of raised insulin.  Lower the industrial carbs and you liberate the trapped fat, that escapes into the bloostream, to be used by muscles.  See?  Carbs, bad carbs, industrial carbs are, well, they're not excellent.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

The Voices in Your Cells

Maybe there's no better analogy-- ones about the same, but no better -- so let's just go ahead and use it. Think of the food you've just eaten, the available calories, as fluid in a bucket. Let's say the bucket is your bloodstream. All those wet calories, waiting in the bucket of your bloodstream, waiting to be used.

Now let's suppose that the bucket has a bunch of tubes in the bottom, through which the calories are diverted to various tasks. There's a calorie/nutrient tube to the brain for thought, to all the muscles for movement, and tubes for bodyheat and digestion and libido, for the immune system, for growth and repair, for hair, skin and nails. Everything that needs energy has a tube to it. Of course there is a tube to bodyfat as well.

Now let's say that everyday the bucket is filled with 2000, uh, calories, and these calories drain down the various tubes in a predictable and healthy way. Homeostasis. Everything is going along fine. Sure, some calories pour down the adipose, fat tube, constantly filling up those fat cells -- but the fat cells do their job, and drain back into the bucket. Fat cells after all are just a storage system -- not forever, just as a buffer, a pantry.  For a few hours after a meal, there's too much available energy, so the fat cells sop it up, like a sponge, and release it drip by drip back into the bloodstream until the fat cells aren't sopping anymore, just damp.

It's a cycle, a healthy cycle, with adipose tissue expanding and contracting slightly to meet the needs of normal variation. So, uh, like, there's a bucket with tubes, and one of the tubes leads to a sponge that drips back into the bucket. Clear?

Now let's suppose that something goes wrong with the fat tube. The opening gets bigger, and more calories pour down it into the fat sponge. That means there is less energy in the bucket, fewer calories that can go down the other tubes. Because one of the tubes is bigger, the bucket drains faster and gets empty sooner. This means that less energy will have gone down one or some or all of the other tubes.

That's thermodynamics. Because, while more calories are entering the fat sponge, the sponge drips back into the bucket at the same, old, slow rate ... maybe even slower. The sponge gets bigger and wetter, more coming in than leaving. It's a ShamWow™ sponge, that really really holds  that mess! Such a deal! Act now!

Well? That's how obesity seems to happen. It's not that more is being poured into the bucket. You're not necessarily eating more. Calories are not being forced down that fat tube by increased pressure -- they are not forced into fat cells. The tube is bigger -- the propensity to store fat increases, for whatever reason.  (The reason is insulin.)

But now the other systems, via the other tubes, get less energy. They were getting what they needed, and now they are not. So the bucket needs more calories than before. If it got 2000 calories before, of which 200 went down the fat tube, but now 400 calories are, and sticking  -- well, then the rest of the tubes have to deal with a 200 calorie shortage. So appetite increases, as a homeostatic adjustment, and now the calories bump up to 2200. Great. Problem solved.

 Except the fat tube gets bigger again. So you either supply even more calories, or just put up with the shortage. Meantime, the fat tube keeps on shunting away too many calories that are not released, creating a constant shortfall for the other systems. Even if the problem doesn't get worse, 200 necessary calories are being misdirected, and simply hoarded. You are eating the same old amount, always hungry, and getting fatter. Lucky you.

So that's the analogy. Not elegant, not pretty, sort of mixed and casual, but see if you can do better.  It may make you famous on the internet!

What makes the tube bigger? Disrupted hormones, mostly insulin. What disrupts the hormones? Bad carbs, industrial carbs. If you try to fix the calorie shortfall by eating more bad carbs, you just make the fat tube bigger -- you disrupt hormones even more. Meanwhile, ignoring increased appetite, the body has to prioritize, trying to compensate for the missing calories by economizing in other areas.

Thought, movement, heat, digestion, uh, immune system, and all those other things. Libido. Hair. They get less energy. Foggy thinking. Lethargy and fatigue. Feeling cold. Illness. Going bald.  Meantime, the fat cells just hoard the treasure. It's not greed. The Bad Carbs are telling them to. Fat cells are very obedient.

People have so much more power than they think.  We are the gods of our behavior, and lords of the universe within our heads.  We might chose to think of it otherwise, but that means all hope depends on what other people do.  And people who think like that just give up.  So?

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank

Threshold Nutrition

There is a threshold level for glucose, below which insulin is benevolent. Insulin has a vast host of problems, when it is present as a vast host. It will make you a vast host -- diabetic, heart diseased, obese. But at an optimal glucose level, all its necessary uses will be met -- brain and organ energy, and whatever else. You ate it, so it’s there, at the right level.

Glycerol is the inevitable waste product of glucose metabolism, and has two functions -- as energy, reconverted into glucose, and as the substrate, the glue of blubber-making triglycerides. If there is no excess glucose in the blood, merely sufficient, or optimal, the resulting glycerol will be used as energy, with a minimal but necessary, optimal, amount left over to formulate triglycerides. We do after all need triglycerides. Bodyfat has a purpose too. Just not so much. Tubby. Sheesh. Go for a walk.

Likewise with protein, amino acids. There is an optimal amount, that lies between an upper and a lower threshold. Too little dietary protein and, well, it’s too dang little. Didn’t you know that? Too much and it just gets turned into glucose, in a very wasteful and expensive process. If that’s the case, why not just eat the carbs? You need as much protein as you need. Any more is redundant and, frankly, stupid.

The constant then should be protein, with focus on the essential amino acids. All other necessary amino acids can be synthesized within the body. The general amount of protein you need to eat can be determined from the nitrogen in urine, and the ideal is to achieve a nitrogen equilibrium. The balanced dietary protein level is around five percent of total caloric intake, for averagely active people, which isn't too active. Obviously athletes would need more, since there is more muscle breakdown. Likewise perhaps with those who are sick or under stress or other exceptional circumstances. What should not happen is that amino acids be wasted by being turned into blood sugar.

The next constant should be glucose. It turns out that the brain uses about 20% of the body’s energy. Logically, more than twenty percent of your calories should be from glucose, since there are other needs for bloodsugar. The brain can also use ketone bodies, but that's a backup system. It will always use glucose, even if it has to steal protein from muscles and catabolize it into glucose. Dietary glucose is technically not necessary. Glucose is necessary -- there is a threshold, a lower threshold. Of course, too much glucose is more than a problem. It is the health problem of the modern age. So there is a huge upper threshold -- let’s turn it into a barrier.

Then there’s fat. Essential fats are essential. The only shortage is in omega-3, and that’s easy to remedy. Of course there are poisonous fats, as excessive carbs are poisonous, and as animal proteins can be. Poisonous. Transfats. Too much omega-6. But that’s easy to remedy as well. Generally though there are very real health benefits to other fats -- lauric acid, say, or oleic -- and those that are not specifically beneficial are just neutral sources of energy.

Too many calories are a problem because, aside from potential obesity, they get burned off as body heat, and that process creates free radicals, which are damaging and mutagenic and aging and bad. The body can and does regulate its weight homeostatically. It should have to do that as little as possible. Don’t race your engine.

What then is optimal for the macronutrients? Something over 20% for carbs -- brain plus CNS plus organs. Something equilibrated for protein. These seem very much to be not technically constants, but limited to a range. The independent variable, after a few essential grams, is fat. If you’re trying to lose fat you’ve stored, eat it less, so that what you have will be used rather than crowding your blood, even as free fatty acids. If you don’t have a weight issue, it’s all about health and performance. Where are you putting your energy? Lots of thinking? Eat a bit more glucose -- as good carbs. Lots of exercise? A bit more protein, and more fat to supply the muscles. What you don't want to be doing is wasting your energy with digesting more than you needed in the first place.

We do need some common sense. Some authors tell us about how good an all-meat diet is. Well, hardly anyone is always right. That's why we laugh at clowns. They're so wrong. The rest of us may be wrong, but we're teachable. Be teachable.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

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CrossFit Burbank

What To Eat

We start with common sense. If your grandma wouldn't recognize it as food, it probably isn't. Food, contrary to popular opinion, does not grow in boxes, bags or cans. Its growth is somehow connected with the ground. As little contact as possible with factories is desirable, generally. Organic? -- heirloom? -- sure, of course. But don't let that stop you. Excellence is better than good enough, but good enough is good enough. Perfect is a fantasy, a destructive fantasy. See? Common sense.

So, what to eat? We've seen it before. Berry-fruit smoothies. Doesn't have to come out of a $400 blender. Just get the job done ... make a smoothie. Berries are superb nutrition. Invented to be food. So get to Trader Joe's or CostCo or where ever, and blend frozen blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, cherries, strawberries ... all very low glycemic load ... you can get exotic and try goji or mulberry or cranberry or gooseberry or acai.  And if you do NOT have a weight issue, maybe a tiny little bit, a cube or two, of mango, pineapple, kiwi, banana, for the nutrients, not for the flavor. The tropical fruits have a higher glycemic load, so go easy on them. On the other hand, a little is reasonable if it's appropriate -- we're after the nutrients. Do NOT guzzle it.  Sip it.  Carb digestion starts in the mouth. Savor the flavor.

Add water, maybe tap, maybe purified ... whatever. Add some protein powder, to taste, not more than 30 grams per serving (and that's a lot) -- maybe rice protein, maybe pea protein, maybe mixed veggie protein -- no need for soy, or whey ... we get enough soy and animal proteins just by being American -- no need to supplement it. Add some coconut oil, some flax seed oil, some omega three oil.

Omega 3 fish oil.  The most important neglected nutrient in the Western / American diet.  Major malnutrition.  We like folks to MEGADOSE it -- two or three TABLE spoons, the big spoon.  Liquid form, Carlsons is a high quality brand, 35 to 50 bucks a bottle, but you're worth the investment.  This is not cod liver oil -- completely different.  Good quality doesn't taste fishy.  (HERE for more details.)  Never use the pills -- rancid.

You now have in effect perfect nutrition. You could live, abundantly, off of just this sort of meal. No need for any other beverage, milk or rice milk or soy milk or almond milk or cow milk or, um, wheat milk or milk milk. Common sense. We're not trying to add calories and spike our insulin. We're trying to get nutrients into our bloodstream.

Most people's blood is sugar water and red corpuscles, and maybe some heavy metals ... strontium or plutonium maybe. Don't be like that. Feed your cells, not your appetite. The bloodstream should be a soup, a thick broth as it were, of nutrients, available when your cells need what they need. You don't know what they need. But they need it. So eat nutrients, not sugar in all its industrial disguises.

What else? Fibrous vegetables. Nutrient dense, calorie poor: the perfect ratio, if there is such a thing as perfect.  Maybe a stew, a delicious stew, of frozen broccoli, cauliflower, mixed peppers, corn and peas and green beans and string beans and carrots. Chop in any other veggies you like, or high quality meats.  Add seasonings. Apple cider vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, turmeric, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, basil, oregano, parsley, any other high-nutrient herbs or spices. Bragg Liquid Aminos -- savory.  Bread?  Some, Ezequiel, at most stores ... seven grains, sprouted ... low glycemic load.  Good.

As we age, or as we continue to abuse ourselves with sub-adequate dietary practices, we stop digesting food properly, or at all.  Very bad.  Eat food, and then digest it adequately.  See how that works?  Fortunately there's such a thing as capitalism in the world, so there are products for which we exchange money and gain benefit.  Specifically, cooking kills all enzymes in the food we eat, which places an undue stress on the pancreas, which makes our own digestive enzymes.  So what?  Our industrial-style diets give us a pancreas three times larger than that of someone with a traditional diet.  Bigger is not better.  So go to a health food store etc and buy DIGESTIVE ENZYMES, and use them with every cooked-food meal.  Very deep long-term benefits.  Further, with any protein meal, use HCl supplements (with betaine and pepsin), say, HERE.

What to eat before a workout? Something that won't spike your insulin. Eat more than half an hour, or an hour, prior to the job. What to eat after the workout? If your goal is to pack on muscle, it's the one time that spiking insulin is good, to usher protein into muscle cells. Here it is again, the post-workout recovery drink:

A can of 100% fruit juice (not the sugar water "drink"), flavor does not matter -- it's all instant carbs anyway, which, in this instance, is the point. Look at the ingredients, see how many grams of carbs there are, and add about one-third or one-fourth that many grams of protein powder -- pea protein is nice. So if it's 250 grams of carbs, add 60 to 80 grams of protein. It's not complicated, it's easy. Protein you don't need just turns into calories, and in the mean time turns your body acidic, and leaches calcium out of your bones, and is hard to digest anyway. Don't get more than you need. Get what you need. That's called optimal.

Add 2 g each of:
• potassium
• magnesium
• creatine
• glutamine
• vitamin C & E
• ALA (alpha lipoic acid) .

Divide it into 3 or 4 portions, freeze them for later, use it within an hour of a hard, big workout.  How concentrated?  Your business, but you do want the fluid.

What else to eat?  Paleo?  Atkins?  Zone?  South Beach? Weight Watchers? They are all insulin-control diets.  Low glycemic load.  It's not all the protein that gives the benefits, it's cutting back the industrial carbs.  Paleo gets it right in the emphasis on good fats and low glycemic load carbs.  As for all the protein, there's a debate that we need not get into.  Eat, be happy, but be responsible.  So eat nuts and seeds and fruits and whole grains and all those good things. In moderation.  Eat them for the nutrients.  Feed your cells abundantly, and feed your appetites moderately.  You know, common sense, like grandma would have wanted.  No need to be perfect.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

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CrossFit Burbank

Protein

There's quite a bit of controversy about the appropriate amount of protein required by various activity levels. It is common to read something like this, at the Weider site: "For those who are physically active, research has shown that between 1-1.5g of protein per pound of body weight is optimal."

In itself this is a virtually meaningless statement, given that no account is taken of gender or lean body mass, let alone body composition. A 105-pound cheerleader and a 240-pound bodybuilder, and a morbidly obese layabed are barely members of the same species -- Homo athleticus ... gracile, robust and otiose. The Weider site -- a commercial webpage with the primary purpose of selling nutritional supplements ... such as protein powders -- attempts to refine its figure with the following chart.

Fair enough. It's not uncommon to read estimates as high as 2 grams of protein per pound of body weight. That's 300 grams of protein for someone 150 pounds, and 1200 calories -- which is precisely half the calories of what most men need on a daily basis.

A very active athlete can burn up to an estimated 3000 calories per workout. This can be estimated with the rough and ready formula of: every pint/pound (of sweat) you lose represents about 350 to 400 calories burned. It's a rule of thumb -- ambient temperature, humidity, hydration levels, ventilation all factor in, confoundingly. That same athlete may lose up to 12 pounds in a few hours -- and must, MUST drink enough water in the next few hours to replace the loss.

How much protein does all this burning and sweating require? And how much protein should a normally active person get? Protein is 4 calories per gram -- same as carbs (most fats are just over twice that -- 9 cals; medium chain lipids are 7 cals, same as alcohol). If we go by the Weider numbers, an active 150-pounder with a 2000 calorie diet (rounding of course) would require up to 900 calories of protein daily. That's like ... uh ... um ... 45%, right? Seems really high. Just about half your calories coming from protein. What, are we cavemen?

That is the crux of the matter. How much protein. There's an actual test to determine what gets used and what gets wasted -- urea nitrogen urine tests, which reveal how much protein the body takes in but cannot use. We might go into it in a future post. But the number is much smaller than what the bodybuilders assert. Standard bodybuilding literature and protein supplement sellers put the number pretty high.

Hm. Now why would that be? It's a mystery. But maybe it's not greed. Maybe they are both profit-minded and sincere. Maybe they're not ignoring contrary evidence in favor of a bias. Maybe they're ignoring it for some other reason.

The contrary testimony puts the daily protein requirement, at the high end, at something between 10 and 15 percent of total calories. Ten percent of a 2000 calorie diet is 200 calories. Fifty grams of protein. Note the difference please, between 45% and 10%. It seems like a lot. Maybe 100 times difference? A million? How could we ever know? The math is so complicated. Of course we're comparing low-end needs of low estimates with high-end needs of high estimates -- but we're pointing that fact out, too. Illustrative of the wide divergence of opinion in the matter.

Protein isn't really supposed to be a fuel. It's about amino acids, which are building blocks and act as peptides and neurotransmitters -- hormone-like. Really important. But not optimal as fuel. When blood glucose isn't available, and when fat isn't up to the job, your body will convert proteins into sugar in an expensive and inefficient process. Your brain needs sugar, you see, more than your body needs muscle. How inefficient? Glad you asked.

This is from "The Second Brain" by Michael Gershon, the seminal figure in modern enteric system research. A few preliminaries, though. You don't need a stomach. "The small intestine and its associated glands can make do without them." [pp. 93-4] Vitamin B12 is the essential issue, since it cannot be absorbed without the "intrinsic factor" that is made in the stomach. Well, we have pills and shots nowadays.

The stomach's parietal cells which make intrinsic factor also make the hydrochloric acid that handles the digestion of protein in the stomach. Only protein is digested in the stomach. Carbs and fats are broken down further along the tube. An interesting question is, why doesn't hydrochloric acid digest the cell that makes it?

To produce the hydrochloric acid of gastric juice, the parietal cells pump hydrogen ions from the blood into the lumen [lining] of the stomach. Chloride ions follow the movement of hydrogen, resulting in the formation of hydrochloric acid outside the cell where the two ions meet.

The trick is to be able to pump the hydrogen ions. This is not easy. Hydrogen ions carry a positive charge. Moving charged particles is difficult because they affect one another. Particles with the same charge repel.... A cell thus cannot just gather up a bunch of positively charged hydrogen ions and move them from one place to another. To successfully transfer a large number of positively charged hydrogen ions from one side of a cell to the other, some other particles with the same charge have to be moved back the other way to replace the hydrogen.

Pareital cells manage to avoid charge separation by making the pumping of hydrogen ions a simple transfer operation. The cells exchange hydrogen ions for potassium ions. Which are similarly charged. ...This hydrogen-potassium exchange is the process that is blocked by omeprazole (Prilosec). Once it stops, acid production comes to a screeching halt.

Since the concentration of hydrogen ions in blood is far less than the concentration required in the gastric lumen, the pariental cell pumps against staggeringly unfavorable electrical and chemical gradients. In terms of the amount of work involved, the pumping of hydrogen ions is not unlike going *up* Niagara Falls in a barrel. The effort is vast and requires the consumption of immense quantities of oxygen, the utilization of magecalories, and the production of an amazing amount of the high-energy molecule ATP. ATP is the currency that the cells spend to get the work done. [p. 95; Gershon's *italics*, emphases added.]

All this work, in order to produce hydrochloric acid, for the sole purpose of digesting proteins. See why this is important? Protein is astronomically expensive as an energy source. It's not like burning coal. It's like burning diamonds. That would be an amazing, vastly immense megawaste of staggering effort. Every effort should be made to spare this expense.

Per Colin Campbell, grand old man of protein research and author of The China Study, the RDA for protein is "about 10%.... This is considerably more than the actual amount required." [p. 58] "Relative to total calorie intake, only 5-6% dietary protein is required to replace the protein regularly excreted by the body (as amino acids)." [p. 308] He's speaking of course about mere metabolic requirements, not fantastical bodybuilder conceits of beef-packing. We won't elaborate on Campbell's frankly compelling argument. His conclusion is that high levels of protein are carcinogenic.

However much protein the body actually requires, any more than that amount is simply foolish. Unfair? We've seen the lengthy quotation that established the context. Digestion produces energy, but it uses energy too. The body is an economy. Profitable economies run as efficiently as is reasonable. When all conditions are optimal, we can afford to be profligate. When there are wide-open frontiers, we might pollute. When we are looking for elite results, we need to apply intelligence and diligence to the process. It is self-evident.

So how much protein do we actually need? For sedentary adults, the RDA for protein is 0.36 grams per pound of body weight. "Health experts say that at maximum, athletes may require 0.55 to 0.73 grams per pound." That's quite a range. The caveman estimate of 1 to 1.5 grams is twice the, uh, smart man estimate. Heh heh. How ever shall we determine which is the more likely?

Results. We have vegetarian athletes who use no animal protein whatsoever, for decades. One of them, for example, in his late forties has 8% body fat, with a BMI is 21.9 -- the exact center of "healthy". He is, as they say, ripped. His daily protein intake averages about 70 grams total -- .39 grams per pound -- 280 protein calories, out of about 3000 calories daily, on which he exercises vigorously for 2 and 3 hours a day.

Clearly, excessive protein is not the key to health. Sufficient protein is a key. Thus, the horrific Atkins Diet is not about health, but fat loss. We won't go into it now. Enough to say it is generally damaging, when extended too long. That's the problem with fad diets. They are fads.

Lasting fitness is about lifestyle, not gimmicks. The body gets stronger by doing what human bodies do, natually. Doing non-functional, highly artificial exercises can make you less fit -- there is a detraining effect that we'll talk about some time. Point is, what you just happen to hear, on TV or at the gym or standing in line, may be true, or it may be foolishness. At FitWorks we hope we make that clear. Because fortune favors the prepared, and doing just anything is a zero-sum game. Do what is effective.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

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CrossFit Burbank

Tonic

It is required that one use a little common sense. Not even a lot. Just some. Like, you actually believed that alcohol was good for you? Because the news told you about a study? O, Despair! For reals? Your mommy told you there was a Santa. Your teacher told you there was protoplasm. Can't we just please do a little thinking for ourselves? Yes. Sure. Drinking poison, a toxin, is going to do wonders for you. It's so good for your heart. Mmm. That red wine is a miracle drug! Salut!

Or you could use your brain. Oh, it reduces cardiovascular disease in women? -- raises good cholesterol and moderates bloodsugar? That is so great! And it lowers prudish inhibitions! So that's a win-win situation! And a daily glass of wine is linked to reduced dementia, boneloss, and lymphoma. That too must somehow be good for the love life. Demented, boneless, lymphomatics -- they just don't do it for the happenin' playah.

But drinking any alcohol at all -- let alone "moderate" -- increases risk of getting cancers of the breast, liver, mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, colon and rectum. The cardio benefits of wine are precisely matched by the increased risk of stroke -- it's good for the heart and bad for the brain. Drinking any amount over moderate, one glass daily for women, two for men, is powerfully linked to a plethora of problems. Disturbed sleep, impaired judgment, and slowed reflex reactions. Fetuses. For younger men, the risks of accident with even moderate drinking far outweigh the cardiovascular benefit.

Health benefits? They come largely from the antioxidants and anti-inflammatories that red wine and dark beers have, independent of alcohol content. Grape juice does the same thing. Or fruits and vegetables, and they don't deplete your B vitamins.  Yes, it decreases social inhibitions, and not all inhibitions are bad, as not all are good.  So there's that.  On the other hand, one's real, inner playah might show through, whatever that is, and it may be vicious.

The convivial lubricant and gaiety-maker has an  inverse correlation to the quality of the conversation. To those who are enjoying their moderate drink, their comments may seem profound or at least insightful. Conversely, they may seem even more obvious than usual. There is much to be commended in emotional availability and an unguarded tongue. But the same could be said for any of the other recreational mood/mind alterers. When we are sick, we need drugs. Give strong drink to the dying. Alas, the judgment it would take to make the judgment call is impaired by the cure.

The ethanol molecule interacts with human biology in untold ways. Of course there are benefits. But the cardio benefits that moderate drinking provides would not be needed at all, were it not for an toxic diet. To use one poison to mitigate against another poison is standard medical practice. Prevention at the level of root cause is not standard practice. So, sure, if one eats foolishly, drink wisely. There is a wisdom of sorts in this. But it's an ironic one.

Maturity seeks out simplicity, and an apt philosophy in this regard is, be happy. This requires that we be good, in the philosophical sense.  The mild tonic effect that alcohol can have is not toxic. The body can handle small doses of poison. If you know your particular genome down to the final allele, then you can do no wrong, or if you do, it is a considered choice. But ... you don't know your genetics. Live in fear? Feel deprived? No. Be happy. Be happy if you have a stroke, though, or get cancer of the rectum.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

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CrossFit Burbank

Day of Reckoning

We have little jokes, but it is serious business. Diet, nutrition. You know, food is what you are made of, right?  It's what you make health out of, and beauty.  Take, for example, acne. May not be your problem. Anymore. But adolescence is difficult for all kinds of reasons. Yes, then, acne is genetic, but diet is major. Stay away from dairy. And as with cardiovascular disease, it turns out to have a major inflammation factor. Omega-3, then. But that's not the point.

A useful practice would be to keep track of what you eat.  Like, write it down.  It's easy is your tastes are simple, but no matter what, it's worth doing.. Just a few jottings, really. Then maybe actually plot out the glycemic load of what you eat. It may be a bit embarrassing.  Take granola bars? No sugar, all natural ingredients. Lots of "fruit juice" -- lots of "cane syrup". Plenty sweet. Tiny little bars, six to a box. It's easy, really it is, to eat the whole box, those six tiny little itty bitty bars. But when you rough out the glycemic load: 23 grams of digestible carbs. A glycemic index value of aprox 70 -- estimated from other granola bars with on-line values. We don't have to be too precise ... but a GL of about 95, for a box of tiny GBars. That is A LOT. A boxload. A whole day's worth of GL. Remember? A day's worth typically ranges between 60 and 180, with the mean a tad below 100. Like, say, 95.

Even if you don't eat the whole box, the  GL of such an innocuous thing as a granola bar is 16 per. That is the equivalent of  a bowl of rice. Or take a bag of microwave popcorn.  No one eats a single serving. There are 2.5 "servings" in the bag. That, good sir or madam, is marketing BS. "See? A serving of our wonderful popcorn is only just a mere inconsequential 160 paltry calories!!!" True. But the bag has two and a half "servings" -- which as all math geniuses will know, amounts to 400 calories. Lies lies lies. The bag has a glycemic load, then, of 26. Adds up.

A healthful berry smoothie?  Maybe a GL score of about 8. A whole big blender full of nutrition, for free, in terms of insulin. That's the easy thing about it. The really nutritious food is free. It's the trash that costs so much, metabolically. As has been said, the Lord God Almighty, Divine Archetect of the Universe, appointed seven annual feasts unto the Hebrews. Seven pig-out days. The body can handle it. But for Americans, every day is a feast day, three times a day. This is not actually the blessing some might suppose, especially since there is hardly ever any thankfulness that goes along with it.

It's not hard, estimating glycemic load. Most people average only 10 different sorts of meals, generally.  We eat the same things over and over. For GL calculations, meat doesn't count, nor fat. It really is just the industrial carbs, and the hardcore starches -- potatoes and rice. After that it's just a matter of estimating the serving size, and that's simple too. About the size of your palm? (Palm, without fingers or thumb or wrist.) About the size of your fist? (Palm, with fingers and thumb -- twice as much.) So it's a little bit of figuring, and then you know it. It's like writing a check to pay a bill. Yes, it's a little bit of a hassle, having to spell out those words and know the date and sign your name. Such a chore. Then again, it's the price you pay to pay the price you have to pay.

A can of coke has a GL of 15. At least granola bars have a nutrient somewhere in there.  But it's a matter of being serious.  We see lots of folks at FitWorks, making beautiful progress, just a bit slower than they'd like, on the schlub.  Well?  Maybe it's time to do the math, instead of eyeballing it.  Who would have thought that Coke and Granola could be comparable problems.

Be excellent.

Here: CrossFitBurbank.com

FW
CrossFit Burbank